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A mixedfactorial design of 2x2x2 was applied (sequence x law x affirmation) toevaluate the effects of prior affirmative representation on the subsequentprocessing of compound negation. The sequence factor was defined to performbetween-subjects comparisons. The other two factors, that is, logic law andprior affirmation were defined as within-subjects factors. The sequence factorwas included to evaluate potential artifacts generated by the experimentaldesign. Statistical analyses showed the absence of such artifacts. Threedependent variables were included: response type, an indirect measure ofintrospection quality, and a direct measure of subjective difficulty. A randomsample of 130 participants were recruited for this experiment. All the participantswere undergraduate students at the National University of Entre Rios,Argentina. 112 were female (86.2%). The mean age was 23.79 years old (SD =6.452). 2 sets of 6 exercises each were given to all the participants. Theclassical selection paradigm was applied, that is, four response options weregiven in each item. Only one of them was the normative response according tologic (DeMorgan?s equivalences for negated conjunctions and negateddisjunctions). One set included prior relevant affirmation before requiringnegation, the other set started straightforward with the negation task. Thetask was to find the logical meaning of such compound negation that operated ona conjunction or a disjunction. By the other side, the set of exercises withoutprior affirmation asked straightforward to find the equivalence for a givencompound negation of a conjunction or a disjunction. After completing each setof 6 responses participants were asked to give an opinion about their ownperformance (introspection quality) and about the task difficulty (subjectivedifficulty). In consistence with the mental models theory and the relevancetheory, prior affirmation increased the frequency of normative responses andthe quality of introspection. However, a direct registry of task difficultyshowed no difference between a prior affirmation condition and astraightforward condition in consistence with the Gricean view of negation. Anunexpected result showed an incremental effect of normative responses for thenegation of conjunctions in comparison with the negation of disjunctions whenprior affirmation provided a pragmatically enriched context. These results arediscussed in terms of working memory dynamics. In sum, our findings suggestthat the processing of compound negation of conjunctions and disjunctions canbe explained as a combination of explicit and implicit processes that arestrongly influenced by pragmatic factors.

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